The Easy Learn.

When building a team, or organizing your own tasks, it is important to assign tasks appropriately. When you display both an interest and a skill in a certain area of your work, you're much more likely to succeed and use time efficiently.

Dr. Viktor Frankl, founder of logotherapy, mused that there are four job types. By following his thinking, you can firstly identify if you- or your team members- are in the right career, and secondly you can effectively delegate work to the ideal individual(s).

1. Hard to learn and hard to do.

Certain industries are filled with these unavoidable complex jobs and tasks.  It may be some in-depth legal accounting, forever updating with new hurdles and difficult considerations, or perhaps some cutting edge technology that requires ongoing strenuous learning due to a feverish string of evolving challenges.  Either way, these are the roles that will occupy excessive time, and require top minds. Dr. Frankl suggest these are the roles that we should avoid to maximize our happiness and career progression. However, we would note that some of the most important tasks may fall in to this category and there may be no shortcuts to success. Simply ensure those assigned such roles are passionate and interested in their work to ensure it is worthwhile undertaking such difficult time vacuums.

Note: This is often when agencies become the most sensible solution. Optimize your time by finding a team already loaded with niche learning, with a rich experience in executing difficult tasks. As noted in job type 2, long term difficult learning is (almost) only worthwhile when it can repeatedly used.

2. Hard to learn but easy to do.

Whilst some tasks and jobs take incredible focus and dedication to learn, once mastered they can be performed fairly intuitively. The term auto-pilot usually refers to AI, yet after much hard work and practice, a pilot will often find that she can easily do her job without much thought. This job category is a worthwhile investment if you can reasonably predict a recurring usage for the skill, ensure the payoff is worth the time.

3. Easy to learn but hard to do.

An example of this would be physical labour. Whilst the instructions may be fairly self explanatory and easy to master, the work always remains physically arduous. These jobs tend to be universally accessible due to the low learning and ability requirements. Depending on your business, you may find outsourcing is the sensible solution for such tasks, as to free up valuable team member time.

4. Easy to learn and easy to do.

This is the goal. These are the tasks that an individual excels in, their natural talent combines with their passion and thusly they're likely to produce the best results.  

"Throughout your life and career, you must be continually analyzing your activities to identify the things you learn and do easily and from which you get the best results and rewards. This type of work is key to career success."
Brian Tracy - Million Dollar Habits.

It is therefore recommended to continuously self-reflect on your ambitions, skills and interests to help identify the opportunities that will make the biggest contributions to your business via intelligently planned work. Organizing your time, to work on what you can do best, will logically lead to the best results.  

Tracy continues from the above quote with: "The quality of your thinking determines the quality of your life."  Whilst he frames this in the context of finding the key job for career progression, we would add it can be applied on a micro-level to task-assignments. The quality of your business will be enhanced by the quality of your planning, being able to identify team strengths and match corresponding tasks is a fine art leading to great reward. Not only will the work be done well, but the team morale will soar as individuals feel valued, productive and successful in their roles.

At Mäd we hire intelligently, looking for 'T Shaped' individuals. We also promote continuous learning through courses and our in-office library. Building a successful team is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle - you can't just jam 10 of the same pieces together and expect to see a new picture! Diversity is the spice of life, and our skillsets continue to sizzle with flavor.

Learn more about our thinking via our Standard Operating Procedures.